Paris, Lyon, Marseille: Senate rejects municipal voting reform

The municipal election reform for Paris, Lyon and Marseille was overwhelmingly rejected in the Senate on Tuesday, June 3, a major setback for its supporters, primarily Prime Minister François Bayrou, who is under pressure from his LR allies in government who are demanding that the bill be abandoned.

The right is hostile to it, the vast majority of the left too, and even the central bloc has acknowledged certain shortcomings: the flagship article of the Macronist -origin bill suffered a disastrous fate in the hemicycle of the upper house of Parliament, with only 97 votes for its adoption compared to 217 opposition.

Adopted by the National Assembly at the beginning of April , with the support of the executive, La France Insoumise and the National Rally, the reform would put an end to the voting method introduced in 1982 in the PLM law, under which voters in Paris, Lyon and Marseille vote in each district for a list of councillors, with the elected representatives at the top of the list sitting on the district council and the municipal council.

In the version approved by the deputies, it instead planned to establish two ballots, one to elect district or sector councillors, the other to elect those of the municipal council, in a single constituency. With one ambition: to make the ballot "more readable" , to bring voters closer to the choice of their mayor and to ensure "that one voter equals one vote" .

This unequivocal rejection by the upper house at first reading complicates the task of the supporters of the text, led by the Paris MP Sylvain Maillard and supported by François Bayrou .

Will the Prime Minister convene a joint committee (CMP), a meeting of seven senators and seven deputies tasked with negotiating to arrive at a joint text? Minister for Relations with Parliament Patrick Mignola refused to confirm this entirely on Tuesday, saying it was a "collective decision." However, he did open the door by stating that it was necessary to "respect the word of each of the Assemblies," refusing to give "preeminence" to the Senate.

In recent hours, several members of the government camp have assured that a joint committee meeting on this text was indeed being considered even if the Senate rejected it. But there is no guarantee that an agreement will emerge, which could lead the executive to decide to bypass the Senate by giving the final say to the National Assembly.

A high-risk operation, because it would then require voting on a text with the RN and LFI… And against the valuable allies of the right. On Tuesday, not a single vote was missing from the LR group to oppose the text castigated by the new party president Bruno Retailleau and by the head of the Upper House, Gérard Larcher.

The right went even further by putting pressure on the government: "With our vote, we are sending a clear signal. The withdrawal of this reform is essential," declared the vice-president of the LR group, Laurent Somon, who subsequently assured that the right would be "inflexible" in its position in the event of a joint committee. "If the government wants to go through with its reform, it will weaken itself," insisted the rapporteur (LR) of the text, Lauriane Josende. "It will be at its own risk," warned another LR senator.

“Without the Senate” ?

Furthermore, François Bayrou had assured in February that he "could not imagine that a text could be adopted on this subject without the agreement of the National Assembly and the Senate." A statement that many opponents of the text, first and foremost the president of the LR senators Mathieu Darnaud, highlighted in their notepads.

The bill's supporters, however, have not given up. If senators do not open up to discussions, "the only thing that is certain is that the reform will be carried out without the Senate," MoDem Senator Isabelle Florennes pointed out on Tuesday. "We must not put ourselves in this situation."

But in a chamber that includes no Insoumis and only a handful of RN elected officials, the balance has tipped overwhelmingly in favor of rejection. Especially since the Socialists, the second-largest group in the Senate, share the same position as the right, with the exception of their Marseille representatives.

"The text is not excellent, it must now be improved," argued Marseille mayor Benoit Payan on franceinfo, calling for the correction of the "democratic anomaly" which results in "the voice of a citizen in our three largest cities not being the same as that of other cities."

Conversely, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo welcomed the "good news" in a statement and called on the government "to abandon this project which is deeply harmful to Parisian democracy."